The Mountain Goats lead singer John Darnielle is back with another nostalgic horror novel. Universal Harvester, the unrelated follow-up to Wolf in White Van, pitches readers into a VHS rental store in Iowa, where someone is taping cryptic and appalling scenes over the cassettes. Continue reading
What happens when a rabies-like disease that targets only blonde women — natural and dyed — sweeps the Western world? That’s the crisis that surrounds The Blondes‘ heroine, Hazel: a redheaded grad student, pregnant with her married advisor’s child. Continue reading
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Video game tie-in novels aren’t known for being big-L Literature, and you won’t spot B.K. Evenson‘s Dead Space, Martyr on any awards lists. That’s a shame, too, because Evenson’s novel is a unicorn — a visceral, horrific unicorn. Dead Space, Martyr is a damn good work of fiction that transcends franchise appeal. Continue reading
For writers who need to back fateful encounters with reason, cyclical evils hold strong allure. It’s easy when you make the Big Bad come knocking every 10, 20, or 250 years: you just have to stage your heroes correctly to make plot events look preordained. Any trope — especially a common one — can be misplayed, but don’t worry: David Mitchell sets up the Slade House dominoes to fall in perfect sequence. Continue reading
It isn’t often that a book I’ve only just read becomes an instant favorite. I tend to realize just how much I’ve enjoyed a novel only when I find myself recommending it to friend after friend after friend. It is perhaps because I can’t do this with John Darnielle‘s Wolf in White Van that I bonded with it so quickly. Continue reading